


Why The VVitch is Terrifying

by exbex



Category: The Crucible - Miller, The Witch (2016)
Genre: Analysis, Essays, Meta, Nonfiction, Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-17
Updated: 2017-09-17
Packaged: 2018-12-30 23:51:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,561
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12120006
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/exbex/pseuds/exbex





	Why The VVitch is Terrifying

It’s difficult not to draw comparisons between Miller’s The Crucible and Eggers’ The VVitch. Both rely heavily on Puritan history, with the Puritan interpretations of Christianity. These similarities offer an explanation for the tragedies of both works, though a divergence occurs when it comes to the horror of The VVitch.

Both works portray Puritan faith as less about belief in the goodness of God and more about hope for God’s mercy (or, more cynically, hope to avoid hell). Consequently, fear and paranoia proliferate, and consequently, a breakdown in relationships and in one’s own mind. This can be seen in both works as blame and guilt take over. 

In both works, guilt over normal sexual development leads to downfall. This guilt is, of course, a result of Puritan repression. The divergence occurs, however, as each work treats the ensuing superstition differently. In The Crucible, dancing in the woods is merely a punishable offence. The terror and paranoia results over Abby’s decision to drink blood in the hopes of killing Elizabeth Proctor. This has the potential, of course, to lead to accusations of witchcraft, a far more serious offense. A snowball effect occurs after Abby realizes that by “confessing” to witchcraft, she can pass blame to other men and women in the village. The girls follow suit and the ensuing frenzy leaves them drunk on power and attention. In The VVitch, Caleb’s guilt over “lusting” after his sister (I use the quotation marks, as he is likely only sexually curious rather than actually wishing to commit incest), coupled with his Puritan upbringing, lead him to superstition and a fear of temptation. The film treats this superstition differently than Miller does. While the fears in The Crucible are completely unfounded, in The VVitch, Caleb does ultimately fall to temptation, as a beautiful witch lures him to his death. Fear and paranoia proliferate among his family as he returns late at night, unclothed, ill, and delirious. Catherine immediately suspects witchcraft, and Mercy and Jacob accuse Thomasin, who had sarcastically confirmed to Mercy earlier that she was witched. Caleb, unlike The Crucible’s Betty, is not faking his illness, and does not make a “miraculous” recovery, instead dying after vomiting the apple of temptation. Essentially, both Miller and Eggers present a Puritan nightmare based on Puritan beliefs about witches. But in The Crucible, it is entirely superstitious while Eggers’ work has the nightmare coming true.

Also present is the failure of a patriarch to take responsibility for his own actions until it’s too late. The Crucible’s John Proctor remains silent on Abby’s confession to him that the girls were only dancing in the woods and that Betty’s illness is entirely faked. He does so, of course, because Abby has the ability to blackmail him with the truth of their brief affair. A charge of lechery is of real concern; to be found out as an adulterer means a shattering of his reputation and, likely, his ability to provide for his family. The VVitch’s William is in a similar situation. The beginning of the film sees he and his family exiled from their community, as he’s been excommunicated from The Church for differences in interpretations of Scripture. The loss of protection from the community and the family’s subsequent settling near the woods, leaves them vulnerable to attack from witches, which is seen early in the film when the baby Samuel is stolen by a witch. William’s choices exacerbate this situation, as he has sold his wife’s silver cup in order to purchase hunting supplies. When Catherine questions Thomasin about the missing cup, she implies that Thomasin has misplaced it, using this accusation to further blame Thomasin for carelessness in watching over Samuel and Samuel’s ensuing disappearance. William remains silent until much later, choosing to confess to Catherine after the fear and paranoia have proliferated.

John and William both confess to their failures, but the results are markedly different. John is able to become vindicated. When Elizabeth forgives him, she tacitly blames herself for his affair. John, unlike William, does not allow a woman to take the blame for his actions. When given a choice to return to his family by confessing to witchcraft, he nearly takes it, but when he sees that so many of his friends, who have also been accused, refusing to confess (and ultimately, as history shows us, helping to bring about the end of the witch hunts), he tears up his confession and is able to experience vindication. When William falls to his knees and confesses to God that he has brought ruin to his family, it’s a nearly poignant moment. I say nearly for two reasons, one of which I’ll detail later, and the other because, unlike John, he doesn’t even receive vindication, as his family ultimately perishes.  
Ultimately, the tragedy is so much more pronounced in The VVitch for the same reasons that its terror is so much more palpable. The VVitch and The Crucible paint bleak pictures of Puritanism, but where The Crucible offers a shred of optimism, The VVitch offers only bleakness. By the end of The Crucible, John has repented and sought forgiveness. He goes to his death triumphant, as he will not sign a confession that will ultimately destroy both his own reputation and that of his friends. The 1996 film version of The Crucible adds a telling additional scene. John and several other respected members of the town, having refused confessions, are about to be hanged. The remaining townspeople, both because the accused “witches” are respected members of Salem, and not, unlike previous victims, social outcasts, and because they’ve witnessed the effects of months of rash behavior, are distraught, whereas they had cheered the hangings of others months before. John, Martha Corey, and Rebecca Nurse begin to recite the Lord’s Prayer as the nooses are put around their necks. This has historical significance, as it was believed at the time that witches, having sold their souls to Satan, were unable to recite Scriptures. (One anecdote from history details a former minister reciting the Lord’s Prayer as he is about to be hanged. This incident is credited with helping to turn the tide towards an end to the witch hunts). The ending is ultimately equal parts bleak and hopeful, as John passionately finishes the Lord’s Prayer, save for the “Amen,” as he is unceremoniously pushed to his death. This chilling ending is softened by his own repentance and determination to do what is right.

The VVitch also ends with a repentance, but this one is to no avail. William falls to his knees, praying. He has boarded up his own children, believing them to be under the influence of witchcraft. His prayers appear to go unheard, as, that evening, Catherine, either via hallucination or due to the forces of evil, signs her name in the devil’s book, as she sees Samuel and Caleb appear to her. She believes she is nursing Samuel, though we see that a Raven actually pecks at her breast, indicating that she has become a witch (witches were thought to possess a “witches teat” that familiars could nurse from). When William wakes the next morning, he finds his haphazard prison cell has been broken open, with his goats eviscerated and Jacob and Mercy missing. Thomasin, unharmed, wakes in time to see the billy goat Black Peter (who we later see is a manifestation of Satan himself) gore William to death. Thomasin is then accosted by Catherine, who once again accuses Thomasin of witchcraft. Thomasin stabs Catherine, forced to kill her in self-defense. The ending provides us with something of a 180-degree shift, as in the beginning of the film, we see Thomasin praying for forgiveness for a host of sins. Now, in shock and desperation, she conjures Satan, who appears to her in a human-like form, promising her luxury if she signs her name in his book. When she acquiesces and follows Black Peter into the woods to join a group of witches dancing and chanting, she appears to do so because there exists no real alternative, as she is miles away from any village (and she surely wouldn’t find sympathy among the Puritans), and has no real means of survival. Her expression changes from numbness to ecstasy as she completes her transformation into a witch, but one has to wonder if she has any free will left, as, by signing her soul over to Satan, she’s effectively under his power. 

The tragedy and power of The VVitch lies in the fact that the story presents the Puritan versions of Christianity and witchcraft as being accurate. Thomasin and her family members cry out to God throughout the film, but God seems to remain silent. If we take an alternate interpretation (one of the family’s troubles is that the crop of corn has failed. We can see that a fungus is growing on the corn, and Eggers has confirmed that it is a fungus that has been proven to cause hallucinations. Interestingly, some historians posit that this may have been an inciting factor in the actual Salem witchcraft trials of 1690), then religion and spirituality can be dismissed outright. If not, it appears that the family has been abandoned by God, either because Jonathan Edwards was correct (“The God that holds you over the pit of hell, much as one holds a spider or some loathsome insect over the fire, abhors you, and is dreadfully provoked. His wrath towards you burns like fire; he looks upon you as worthy of nothing else but to be cast into the fire. He is of purer eyes than to bear you in his sight; you are ten thousand times as abominable in his eyes as the most hateful, venomous serpent is in ours”) and their sin is too great, or because their paranoia has made them susceptible to Satan. This is in sharp contrast to The Crucible. John Proctor feels assured, in tearing up his confession, that he is doing the right thing. It ultimately matters not whether or not God exists, as the actions of John and others help to put an end to the trials. An unquestioned adherence to religion spurred the witch trials, but John and others, who exhibit true faith, become martyrs of a sort. The tragedy is still great, considering the lives lost, but there is a cautious optimism, because their deaths are not entirely in vain, either because God does exist, and will surely reward them for their faithfulness, or God does not exist, but at least their refusals to confess to unfounded accusations help to bring an end to the injustice. 

The VVitch is much darker and more unsettling, because Puritan notions of witches and Satan exist, and therefore God exists as well. But the faith that sustains characters like John Proctor does not sustain Thomasin and her family, though they seem to confess their sins and authentically reach out to God. One could argue legitimately that the family members are victims of their own selfishness and lack of faith, and, particularly in William’s case, pride, and therefore God is not to blame, but it becomes evident that Satan is both literal and imminent, and it is difficult to justify the goodness of a God who is both silent and willing to hand people over to evil.

As much as I would like to take vindication in the film’s conclusion, seeing as a member of what is arguably the most oppressed group of people in history (teenaged girls), seems to find some liberation. Indeed, one could argue that Thomasin has gained a sort of freedom at the end, but I would argue that she shifts from one patriarchal system to another. She is oppressed, as a daughter, by both of her parents, as she is blamed for Samuel’s abduction and the twins’ misbehavior. Her parents also discuss selling her to another family (a common practice at the time for a girl entering puberty), which causes mistrust between them. Her parents refuse to believe her when she tells them that she has not been practicing witchcraft. One could argue then, that this is the reason for the family’s downfall, as William and Catherine refuse to show mercy toward Thomasin the way that God would (should) show mercy. But ultimately, as previously mentioned, Thomasin simply goes from being oppressed by one patriarchal system to another, as Satan is, of course, presented as a male figure. His witches are all female in this story, and they must gain power by slaughtering an infant. It’s no coincidence that it’s a male infant, as Puritan beliefs suspected that the fat from a male infant would render witches more powerful. The patriarchy holds some blame in The Crucible as well, as the trouble begins because young women are taught to fear their own sexuality, but when one watches The Crucible, it’s easier to swallow, in a sense, because there at least exists a criticism of sexism in both more postmodern versions of Christianity and atheism. The VVitch tells us that the patriarchal systems are real, and as we see, there’s no use in fighting them. Thomasin calls out male hypocrisy, but it comes too late. When she signs her name in Satan’s book at the end, I would argue once again that it’s out of desperation rather than desire, as the alternative is surely death (and, since she has sinned against God, a sinner’s eternal torment in hell rather than the hedonistic pleasures of joining Satan’s witches). She finds a freedom in turning to Satan that she would never hope to find otherwise, but she is bound to him and cannot break her allegiance; she has not independence.

There is a moment in The VVitch that provides a sort of loophole that potentially lessens the terror of the story, though still renders it effective as a metaphor/cautionary tale. It’s a very short scene at the beginning of the film. As the family leaves the village, we see two Wampanoag men. The presence of the two men who were not Puritans had me embracing an alternative interpretation of the film’s events. I theorized that the hallucinogenic effects of the corn were to blame, or perhaps a series of unfortunate events (starvation, illness) led to the family’s demise, and Thomasin, in her final days, fabricates the events in her grief. However, my research led me away from a metaphorical interpretation of the film. Research concerning the Wampanoag society indicates that they, like many Indigenous peoples, converted in large numbers to Christianity. A key factor in Indigenous conversion was the devastation of smallpox and a belief among Indigenous peoples that this was an indication that the God of Christianity was more powerful and had won a sort of supernatural system of wars. From a perspective of more postmodern interpretations of Christianity, this is tragic, as a postmodern Christianity favors a more merciful God. From an atheistic perspective, it’s tragic and infuriating in its foolishness, and both interpretations can accurately point the finger at hegemonic structures as being the real villains. When immersed into the story of The VVitch, it’s simply terrifying, as it renders the Puritan version of God, the devil, and spirituality as accurate. And the idea of a God who remains silent in the face of such horror is more terrifying that the absolute absence of God.


End file.
